The next 36 months will be crucial for businesses as CIO’s look to refresh their ageing technology estates in order to embrace new working cultures, keep up with customer demand and provide higher levels of enterprise availability.

According to our latest research, undertaken by Vanson Bourne, it seems the majority of UK businesses believe that a tech overhaul is the key to increasing competitiveness and can provide them with a greater capacity for continued growth. And with nearly half of businesses admitting to having gone between three and five years since an infrastructure update, it’s clearly long overdue.

In a short space of time we’ve seen the emergence of numerous new working practices, from employees bringing their own devices to working remotely: the office has changed and CIOs must not only adapt with it to avoid the risk being left behind – but take a strategic lead. As our findings indicate the majority of organisations are set to transform their IT estate within just three years it’s becoming ever more vital that CIOs act sooner rather than later.

I’m not alone in thinking this: John Cridland, Director- General at the CBI, has warned enterprises that the pace of technology change, innovation and business adoption is faster than ever before. He commented: “The companies that will succeed in the future will be those that understand how a technology transformation can provide the underlying platform for business growth.”

Yet despite the overwhelming evidence, many CIOs are finding that the question of funding is holding up infrastructure investment. While it is undeniable that an IT transformation can be expensive at first, in the long run failing to keep up with current trends could be far more costly. CIO’s must convince their businesses to help them build a robust, resilient and flexible infrastructure that can cope with the high availability demands of employees, customers and stakeholders as well as ensure the organisation retains an edge against competitors.

This next tech refresh is likely to be one of the most important as CIO’s across the UK begin to update their technology estates. Needless to say that this is a pivotal era for the UK’s CIOs and the decisions taken over the next 36 months will no doubt impact the boardroom agenda for years to come.